| Ayyub Thakur | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1948 Shopain, Jammu and Kashmir |
| Died | March 10, 2004 London |
| Organization | World Kashmir Freedom Movement, Justice Foundation, Mercy Universal. |
| Political movement | Jammu and Kashmir insurgency. |
Muhammad Ayub Thakur (1948 – March 10, 2004[1]) was a Kashmiri political activist and founder-president of London-based World Kashmir Freedom Movement (WKFM), an organisation that claimed to seek a "peaceful political solution" to the Kashmir Conflict. He founded a "charity organization", Mercy Universal, which was investigated by the British Charity Commission for links to terrorist groups including Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir. Thakur also agitated for the right of self-determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. After Thakur's death in 2004, both WKFM and Mercy Universal became much less active. Neither has any full-time employees as of 2011, nor does either have any regular source of legitimate funds.
Thakur was close to Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, the head of the so-called Kashmiri American Council (KAC), revealed in 2011 to be funded by the Inter-Services Intelligence, the intelligence agency of the Pakistani military. Thakur was also close to Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the pro-Pakistan leader of the "hardline" faction of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the umbrella separatist organisation in Kashmir.
Thakur had lectured extensively on Kashmir issue. He attended hundreds of seminars and conferences around the world in universities, think tanks and other institutions, including the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and United Nations bodies. Thakur was a self-appointed Trustee of the UK-based alleged "charitable oraganisation", Mercy Universal, which he had founded in 2000. Mercy Universal claims to provide "humanitarian assistance" mainly to the Kashmiri people.,[2] He was the Director of the Justice Foundation[3], which he founded in 2003 as a registered UK company "to advance the Kashmir cause through public advocacy". The Justice Foundation (also known as the Kashmir Centre) came, as of July 2011, under investigation by British and American authorities for being a de facto front for the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of the Pakistani Military, based on evidence uncovered by the FBI via the July 2011 arrest and interrogation of Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai in the U.S. In August 2011, London's The Daily Telegraph revealed that Fai has secretly been serving as a Director of the Justice Foundation.
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Muhammad Ayub Thakur was born in 1948 in a farming family in Pudsoo village near Shopian, district Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir. He was the eldest of four children.[4]
Dr. Ayub Thakur obtained his Doctorate (Phd.) in Nuclear Physics from the University of Kashmir. In 1978, after a brief stint at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Zakoora, Srinagar)[5] he became lecturer in the Department of Physics in the same university. He had a keen interest in the social and political issues of Jammu and Kashmir.[4] He started his political career in early 1970s as a student leader in the University of Kashmir. He rallied Kashmiri youth and students and founded Jammu and Kashmir Students Islamic Organisation in 1974 and continued to be its patron till 1977. This organisation later merged with another organisation and changed into Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, which he headed from 1977–1981. He was also the president of Kashmir University Students Union and Kashmir University Research Scholars Association. As a student leader, Dr. Thakur attended international youth and student conferences at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1979, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1980 and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the same year. In these conferences, Dr. Thakur put forward the so-called Kashmiri viewpoint and drew the world attention towards the Kashmir problem. In Kuala Lumpur conference in 1980, he was instrumental in passing a resolution condemning the alleged Indian "occupation" of Jammu and Kashmir. Dr. Thakur organised meetings of the youth and students to challenge the Kashmir's accession to India which he considered as "fraudulent". He strongly opposed the accord between unionist Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974.
After becoming lecturer at the University of Kashmir he intensified his political activities. He began organising students and colleagues "to form an intellectual response". In August 1980, he and many of his colleagues at university and students organisation, Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba, organised an international conference on the issue of right of self-determination of Kashmiris as outlined in the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir. The Indian government, however, banned the conference and dismissed Dr. Ayyub from his job as a university teacher, and later imprisoned him along with his colleagues under Public Safety Act (PSA). Thakur claimed that during his five month imprisonment, he was "subjected to inhuman torture of all sorts, but he refused to compromise on his political ideology". After his release in 1981 he began to travel across in Kashmir to mobilise Kashmir youth. He claimed that police "tried to interrupt his activities" every now and then. Claiming to be tired of "playing a cat-and-mouse game with the police", on May 25, 1981 he opted to accept the offer of a lecturer in the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia where he served up to 1984.[6]
In 1981, Thakur joined the Nuclear Engineering Department of King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as Assistant Professor. During his stay, he tried to mobilise support for the Kashmir cause and organised camps for the Kashmiri pilgrims during Hajj. He married the daughter of a family from Baramulla in 1981. The groom's consent was taken on phone and the bride flew to Jeddah.[5] After 5 years in Jeddah, he was a denied a tenured professorship by the university. He had to resign his position, and then moved to London for a post-doctoral research programme. He simultaneously started organising support for the Kashmir issue. Later in 1990, he took over as the founder president of the World Kashmir Freedom Movement (WKFM).[4] He was also self-appointed trustee of the UK-based organisation, Mercy Universal, which he had founded in 2000 and Director of the Justice Foundation, also known as the Kashmir Centre, which he founded in 2003.[7] It was revealed in August 2011 by The Daily Telegraph of London that Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai was secretly a Director of the Kashmir Centre in London, amidst a joint US-British investigation of the Centre.
All the three organisations founded by Thakur have been investigated by Scotland Yard, the Charity Commission and the FBI for financial ties to the Pakistani Military and terrorist groups active in Jammu and Kashmir. Of the three, only the Justice Foundation (Kashmir Centre) is still active as of 2011, while the other two are only sporadically active. As of August 2011, a Brussels-based affiliate of the Kashmir Centre, named the Kashmir Centre-Europe, also came under investigation based on evidence found by the FBI implicating the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of the Pakistani Military in secretly funding both Kashmir Centres in London and Brussels.
The Government of India stripped Thakur of his citizenship in 1993 for treason, after impounding his passport. He subsequently obtained British travel papers which he used until his death in 2004. Upon his death, Thakur's family petitioned the Government of India for the privilege of being buried in his ancestral village in Jammu & Kashmir. Since he died a de facto British subject, having forfeited his Indian citizenship, the Indian Government summarily dismissed this petition. However, Thakur's widow retains her Indian citizenship and would be entitled to burial in Jammu & Kashmir, should the family wish it, if she remains an Indian citizen until her death.
The World Kashmir Freedom Movement (WKFM) is an umbrella organisation of expatriate Kashmiris from Indian administrated Kashmir that has claimed to be "working internationally for the promotion of the Kashmir cause". It was set up on 17 June 1990 with Dr. Ayyub Thakur as it president and has claimed that it has offices in Europe, Americas and Middle East. As of 2011, none of these offices remain open and it is not known when they closed and how active they were before closing. In July 1991, the World Kashmir Freedom Movement organised an "international conference on Kashmir" in Washington, D.C. Some non-ranking US congressmen, members of the British Parliament (almost entirely backbenchers) and European Parliament as well as certain academics participated in the conference and "supported tri-partite talks for the resolution of Kashmir". During his address to the conference, Thakur urged Kashmiri militants to "renounce the misuse of force no matter how compelling the self-determination aspiration". He was the first Kashmiri leader to offer "conditional and issue-based moral support to the Kashmiri militants". The conference was self-described by Thakur as a "great success" much to the "annoyance" of India.
The Indian Government took the "success of the conference very seriously", and accused Dr. Ayyub Thakur of sending money to the Kashmiri freedom fighters for terrorist activities. Under the direction of various Indian intelligence agencies, many cases ranging from terrorism to sabotage were registered against him. The Indian Government booked him under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). This case later formed the genesis of the Jain Hawala Corruption Case, in which 38 prominent Indian politicians[8] were charge sheeted and later discharged.
Dr. Ayyub Thakur also attended the 1991 Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Foreign minister meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, the 1993 OIC summit meeting in Dakar, Senegal and World tactics did not yield the desired result. On this occasion Dr. Ayyub Thakur led a delegation and highlighted the Indian "intransigence". World Kashmir Freedom Movement also joined other Kashmiri groups and attended March 1993 session of United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and later the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna, Austria in June 1993. As the World Kashmir Freedom Movement activities were growing, Indian Government tried to extradite Ayub Thakur on charges of financing terrorism and secessionist plotting. The British government issued him with a travel document, which he used till his death.[7]
During the visit of British Home Secretary Jack Straw to India in May 2002, Indian Deputy Prime Minister, LK Advani in his meeting with him accused Dr. Thakur of diverting funds to the Kashmiri militants for terrorist activities. He first demanded the arrest of Dr. Thakur under the new anti-terrorist laws and when it did not work, demanded his deportation or extradition to India.[9] The Indian Government tried to build the pressure and made repeated demands for his extradition. Moreover, the Indian intelligence agencies allegedly launched a "propaganda campaign" in the Indian media against Dr. Thakur. Later, in August 2002 when Mr. LK Advani visited UK, he again demanded the extradition of the Dr. Ayyub Thakur.[10]
In 2000, World Kashmir Freedom Movement president and its leaders formed Mercy Universal, self-described as an "International Humanitarian Organisation" registered with the Charity Commission in the United Kingdom. It claims to work for "the mitigation of peoples suffering in some of the world's poorest communities in South Asia and East Africa". It claims to also provide humanitarian relief in the UK.
Although it has never had official permission to operate in Jammu and Kashmir, it has claimed to have "rehabilitated than 2,000 people" in the region. Among the alleged beneficiaries are "hundreds of widows and orphan children whose parents were killed by the Indian Army". Mercy Universal claims to "carry out its work without being prejudiced by political views of its organisers" and also claims to "help anybody who is a victim and has suffered during the ongoing struggle". However, the Indian Government has collected extensive evidence of Mercy Universal having funded terrorist activities, and arrested many of its volunteers. Britain's Charity Commission has investigated charges that the outfit was funding terror in Kashmir, specifically via the acting a money-laundering front for the Pakistan-based terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen, led by Sayeed Salahudeen.
During the last 15 years all of his family members, relatives and friends have claimed they were subjected to "harassment" by the Indian army and its various agencies. His ancestral house in Jammu & Kashmir was allegedly raided and his old parents allegedly threatened.[4]
He died at the age of 55, in London on March 10, 2004 after contracting an illness.[1] He was suffering from pulmonary fibrosis.[11] His funeral was held at the London Central Mosque, Regent Park, and he was laid to rest at the Garden of Peace, in Greenford, West London, close to where he had been living for many years.[12] The Indian Government refused to allow his remains to be returned to his ancestral village, since he had been stripped off his Indian citizenship in 1993, and accordingly lost his right to be buried in Jammu and Kashmir.
Thakur is survived by his widow, a son and two daughters, all of whom reside in London. His wife remains an Indian citizen but has not visited Jammu & Kashmir since her husband's death in 2004. His three children are British subjects. His son Muzammil is a small businessman who has been occasionally active in the affairs of the London-based Justice Foundation (Kashmir Centre), founded by his father. Muzammil Thakur's visa applications to visit India have been denied by Indian consular authorities in London, given the nature of the Kashmir Centre's activities and its financial ties to the Pakistani Military and to terrorist groups such as Hizbul Mujahideen.